Hey guys,
I just skimmed the ginormous thread about some magazine giving Lair some pretty low scores.
Before I go any further, I'd like to give you some advice: for God's sake take it easy. Do guys realize you are being riled up over a game? The more fanatic of you remind me of some the fanboyism that plagued the Comic-con this year.
Please don't forget why we are playing games in the first place: to provide a temporary escape from our otherwise hectic/senseless/painful lives. If you want to fight over this as if you were fighting over religion, then you've got the wrong hobby.
Now:
I finally got the chance to give Lair a good 20 minutes of play time at the Comic-con. Quite frankly, "disappointed" is the very last term I'd use to describe my feelings towards Lair. In fact, it's more along the lines of "I can't wait for August 14th to come around".
First, what seems to matter to you the most; the controls. Let me be honest: most first-time Lair players will NOT get a grip with the controls from the get-go. This is why Factor 5 have assembled a series of practice tutorials that you can use to hone you're dragon-flying skills. These tutorials include basic/advanced flight maneuvers, and basic/advanced combat techniques. It is IMPERATIVE that you pass all of these tutorials before you play the game and end up *****ing about the controls.
Once I was done with all the tutorials, I was given a choice of levels to choose from over a map. Factor 5 seemed to use disjointed Arabic letters for the map locations, apparently to give it a sense of mysticism. For an Arabic speaker like myself, I found it to be both silly and a bit of an honor. Moving on...
The level I chose was the now infamous bridge level.
Visuals: Once the level booted up, the production levels behind the game just hit me in the face like a train. Intricately designed bridges, massive armies, huge sense of scope, majestic looking water, and of course: your own dragon, which itself is a spectacle in in-game animation. When you you witness all of these things on your screen at once, prepare for a change of underwear. On the demo I played, there were STILL issues with the framerate, especially when you get close to the bridge for landing amongst the army. I asked the Sony rep if the final game will have any framerate problems. He said: "Probably not, because Factor 5 finished the game a few days ago." Things to note: high-polygon beasties, beautiful water effects, and the best in-game dragon animations ever. To say that this game is eye-candy is an understatement.
Mid-air controls: smooth and easy as pie (bare in mind that I spent some time with the tutorials to get the hang of things). Between level objectives, there is nothing more satisfying than swooping around the bridge and shooting down a few dragons and engaging in mid-air combat. The sock-puppetry of the mid-air fights are gone, and now your dragon transitions smoothly from one well placed claw-swipe to a streaming breath of fire. Needless to say, these scenes are some of the coolest in the game.
Ground controls: Not as easy, but not a complete disaster either. You have the choice of swiping te enemy with your claws, shooting fire, or stomping the ground. The biggest problem here was the camera, where it almost always gives you a fine view of your dragon's arse. This definitely doesn't help if you have soldiers throwing harpoons at you from behind, or if you have a giant rhino charging in to ram you. I wasn't aware if this problem will be remedied by the game's release, or if there were any camera controls to try and improve the situation.
A couple more minutes later and I was done, desperately hungry for more.
Now, with all due respect to some reviewers out there, what I played was (IMHO) NOT average gaming material. The visuals don't allow it, its production values don't allow it, the gameplay doesn't allow it. All this said, one man's trash can always be another man's treasure, so my advice to you is to wait for the demo, download it, play it, be floored, then frantically run for your nearest game store to secure yourself a copy of what is sure to be one of the most memorable gaming experiences on the PS3 this year.
- H